


Go West (the nostalgia parade remix)

by obstinatrix



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, LGBTQ Themes, M/M, Old mutants in love, Politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-21
Updated: 2015-06-21
Packaged: 2018-04-05 10:59:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4177293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obstinatrix/pseuds/obstinatrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>San Francisco has changed a lot since 1962. So has Erik. So has the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Go West (the nostalgia parade remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heyjupiter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heyjupiter/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Go West, Young Man](https://archiveofourown.org/works/214726) by [heyjupiter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heyjupiter/pseuds/heyjupiter). 



There wasn't much to the little pub, nothing in particular that should have made it stand out in Erik' s memory as it had. Certainly, there was nothing to indicate how stalwart it had stood in its mission while the area transformed around it, the dingy hinterland of 1962 into the living sea of rainbow colours and garish window displays it was today, unapologetic. Erik liked that most about it, that brazen refusal to feel shame. All his life had been a thrust toward that for his own people, all of them, and here, between this old bar and The Rainbow Kosher Deli And Queer Bookstore, he was definitely among his own. 

Charles, for once in his stubborn life,  seemed to agree. Erik could feel the waves of contentment rising off him, singing through the frame of his wheelchair, the iron pulsing warm in his blood.  He looked up, and Erik caught his eyes,  smiled back at the exact moment that Charles's face crinkled in pleasure. 

"Do you remember," he began, and Erik knew without any telepathy what he was about to say, "that time, with the leather slings --" 

"And the eye watering public sex acts: how could I forget, Charles?" Fisting had been (pun unintended and regrettable) huge in San Francisco in 1962, the newest craze. While Erik was all for people being allowed to do whatever they wished in bed or bed-related activities, he still hadn't quite wiped the scar of that night from his brain. Afterwards, though -- and of course this was what Charles had meant, really; Erik could feel the sweet flicker of it in his mind -- all the strangeness had been forgotten under the new taste of Charles's mouth, the longed-for touch of his hands. 

"So vanilla, Erik," Charles said; but there was an accompanying amused ripple across the surface of Erik's mind that drew pointed attention to the silver in his underwear, which really was quite different. Still, Erik reached a lazy tendril of his power to heat the rings long settled in Charles's nipples: _yes yes I get the point_. Not that it was at all the same sort of thing.  The metal in their bodies served as much as an anchoring force to Erik as a wedding ring might to a human, a marker of ownership and love. Erik could never forget the first night he came to Charles and felt the hum of new metal inside him, closer than skin, there where a brush of Erik's fingers could make Charles arch and cry out. 

It was still bizarre to him, some days, after a life spent in and out of hiding, that he could stand with Charles -- with his _husband_ , and wasn't that a thought? -- on the street like this, waiting not for a police van, but for a parade. They'd ventured out last year during Pride, but Erik had been unsure about it for reasons he could no longer recall, although doubtless Charles would have a bullet pointed list. ( _Naturally, my dear, should you ever actually want to hear it_.) He'd hovered on the pavement, watching the young men and young women and young people of indeterminate gender swirl past in a blur of glitter and noise, and felt...old, more than anything. Out of place, and obscurely sad. But that was last year, and a lot had changed since then. 

Charles's offhand remark about his long-worn uniform as a sort of drag, for one thing. That had rankled with him until he'd turned on his heel and announced they were leaving, missing the swirl of the cape acutely as he did so. Charles, with that damnable patient expression of his, had let himself be sped back to the car. Had barely protested when Erik had crossed a long established boundary in lifting Charles into the car himself. When Erik pulled up at the nearest Walmart, having decided he needed a drink, it was to find all the disabled spaces occupied, whereupon he had hauled an obnoxiously large SUV to the outer perimeters of the parking lot and pulled up sharply in the space he'd uncovered. "If he will choose to park in a handicapped spot without a badge, this is what he gets," he snapped, in response to Charles's infuriating lack of protest. 

"Yes, dear," Charles said, wearing that face of placid concern that meant he thought he was letting Erik Work Through Something, which had been ridiculous, because there was nothing to work through about a load of youngsters dancing in hot pants. 

Having established that Charles really was going to keep up this impassive lack of comment, Erik had destroyed several grocery carts on their way out, thinking he might at least get something out of the unexpected and largely unwelcome lack of resistance. 

A year later, though, Erik could see that -- well, not that Charles had been _right_ , exactly, but that he understood perhaps what he'd meant. A Mutant Life magazine he happened to stumble across had started it off. There were mutant rallies and parades on a regular basis these days, which of course Erik supported wholeheartedly, and he glowed with warm pride as he flicked through the pictures. Mutants with their visible mutations all proudly on display, spikes and scales, blue fur, tails extended. Mutants with yellow eyes, mutants with wings, mutants, like himself, who looked outwardly human, in shirts emblazoned with slogans and garish colour, proclaiming their belonging. 

Oh. 

He'd thought about that all that day, and later, in bed, Charles curled around him both physically and mentally and murmured, "Exactly, Erik. We both pass, if we want to, but you never wanted to, did you?" A sleepy kiss to the corner of Erik's mouth. _Out and proud_. Charles's thumb rubbed over the gold band on Erik's finger, and Erik closed his eyes. 

And so, this year. Intersectionality was always a part of this March, but still, Erik, now that he recognised what the stakes were, had wanted to push the boat out. Nothing less than the services of a custom designer could have sufficed when it came to his cape, with its rainbow stripes and its Stars of David and its mutant rights slogans. Charles hadn't even complained, although he'd mocked a little. But as Charles reached up and squeezed Erik's hand, Erik knew the truth was that he'd missed the cape. Somewhere deep down. 

"Very deep," Charles said, rolling his eyes, but his hand stayed firm in Erik's. "The mutant group is meeting in the Tail and Pitchfork, if you want to meet up with them before the parade starts?" 

Erik thought about it for a moment, but only a brief one. There were other days for purely mutant protest; there were televised debates and angry columns for that. If he and Charles were to march with the mutants, this would become at once something different. They were mutants, of course, but today they were husbands, and that had been almost more unthinkable in 1962 than that others out there could move things with their minds, or see the future, or fly. In 1962, he'd come here with Charles, had kissed him not half a mile from here, had lost his heart forever to this infuriating beautiful man. Even if they'd neither of them had any sort of power in their bodies, they would have found each other, Erik could not doubt. That, in itself, deserved its own celebration. 

"I think," Erik said, "I'd just like to watch for a bit first, if you don't mind." 

"Of course, my love," Charles said, and laced their fingers together. "Of course."

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this on 21st June, completely unaware that a few days later the Equal Marriage bill was going to be passed. Pleasant coincidences!


End file.
